EXCLUSIVE: In a whirlwind auction, Warner Bros is closing a deal for It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life Of Love And War, a memoir by Lynsey Addario that has Steven Spielberg attached to direct and Jennifer Lawrence to star, with Andrew Lazar producing. The memoir has been the hot title since it was excerpted by The New York Times Magazine, and there were no shortage of bidders for the life of a woman who goes into the most dangerous places in the world in search of truth.

Here’s who the bidders were: Working Title was angling to get it for Reese Witherspoon, Darren Aronofsky has been trying to get it for Natalie Portman, The Wolf Of Wall Street‘s Margot Robbie was after it, and The Weinstein Company was bidding for George Clooney and Grant Heslov. The subject met with bidders and everyone was sold on her remarkable personal and professional life. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who went to Afghanistan during the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and carved out a niche giving an identity to the victims of conflict. That includes how Afghans suffered during the Taliban regime, the Iraqi War, victims of genocide in Darfur, the rape of women in the Congo. Her work in dangerous locales included her being kidnapped by pro-Quaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.

These are all very formidable choices, but how do you compete with a package of Spielberg directing, and Hollywood’s top young actress in Lawrence? Warner Bros previously got close with Spielberg on American Sniper — Lazar produced — and the big Moses movie Gods And Kings, and now maybe the third time will be the charm.